


Queen Anne's Lace

by Neurtsy



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Other, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:27:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4395371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurtsy/pseuds/Neurtsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two endings collide into an unfinished beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queen Anne's Lace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [louhearted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/louhearted/gifts).



> Your prompts were incredible. I love when things are vague and enticing.
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/neurtsy

Harry’s thrown back against the wall, limbs and spine retracting and collapsing with the impact. His eyes cloud over and there’s something making an inhuman sound, hitching and wailing, and a stink of blood and sulfur has filled the air and filled his lungs. 

 

Something pulseless and gristly moves in, hands scaled and skinless and grappling around his throat and collar. A scream is caught dead to match along the walls of his throat. 

 

A shriek of shards splintering out snaps his vision back into focus. Veiny yellow eyes sunken deep into a writhing skull is inches from his own. Lips pulled back into a snarl of gnashing teeth, and the smell of death.

 

Harry’s eyes shut to block out the look of decay. His jaw grits down, steely and powdering, and he waits for hands to crush around his windpipe. 

The noise inside his head has become unbearable, banshee shrieks of hate and horror, paralleled with the scraping, grinding sound of glass against bone and concrete. 

 

"Come on, H." Zayn's voice cuts through the screaming in his skull, the rash behind his eyelids. "We're leaving, let's go." And he's being dragged, being hauled upright and away by sinew and fingernails. 

 

They make it outside. Harry’s all headache and his heart won’t quit in his chest, insisting that they’re being pursued.

 

Zayn waits, patient and stony, as he vomits up a mass of tar and bile onto the ground. It tastes of insecticide and gasoline.

 

He's shoved into the passenger seat of a car. The edges fray and everything goes a peeling shade of grey.

 

☀

 

Harry wakes slowly, his mouth filled with ash and head swarmed with images as he blinks. Buildings flank them on either side, whipping by, and a motion sickness flavoured headache picks up behind his eyes. For one strained heartbeat it feels almost like flying. 

His face is pressed to the car window, body cramping and bent, too cold, and soaked in sweat. Zayn is there beside him, one hand on the wheel, the other cradled in his lap, badly wrapped in reddened bandages. 

The colour brings up a dull twisting in Harry's guts. The sound of breaking glass and his own attempts at screaming, raw and ropey in his throat. His skin starts crawling, pale and clammy, and he can suddenly smell flesh, salt and iron, and his teeth ache.

 

"Do not be sick in my car," Zayn says. He sounds bored, but Harry can see the shake in his fingers too. He swallows around the grime coating his throat.

"Where are we going?" His words sound sticky, lips feeling cracked. 

"Does it matter?" Zayn replies. It's not a question, and Harry lets it fall. 

_"Away,"_ Zayn adds, and the swell of something crushing shocks and drowns Harry's lungs. He names it relief, and lets it die.

 

☀

 

The sky’s a pale dark when Harry wakes again, and he can’t tell if the light is just coming on, or abandoning them. The rhythm of the car over glass and grit and asphalt is rattling his thoughts, and his skin feels greasy and tight. 

His neck twists and hurts and he sees that Zayn hasn’t moved. His eyes are still vacant, and fixed ahead, one hand curled around the wheel, the other twisted in his lap. 

 

They’re out of the city now. Outside the windows, trees are blurring past, reaching bony fingers into the sky, ghoulish and bleak. 

 

☀

 

Harry’s eyes have blurred, unfixed and staring at the skeleton pushing out from behind the skin of Zayn’s face. He looks to be made of ash and shadows in the dull light. Black lines encircle his eyes, sinking and bloodshot. 

 

He’s half-asleep, and still shaking, sweating, and for an uneven breath, a skipped heartbeat or two, the man in the driver’s seat is unrecognizable. A stranger, a warped projection of all the pains and spasms living in Harry’s own skull, and he jerks himself awake in his seat. He crashes against the closed window in a frantic tugging motion to get away. 

 

“Save the breakdown for when we’re off the road,” Zayn says, and it’s clipped and flightless, but it’s anchoring too, and the familiar drawl drags him back down.

 

“That’s just what you’ve been doing,” Harry finally says. It’s the first time he’s spoken in hours, and his throat burns.

“Don’t sulk,” Zayn says back evenly, and Harry laughs. It turns into something hysterical.

 

Finally, it tapers off into damp silence. 

 

☀

 

The pull off the road at some little nowhere patch pretending to be something civilized. Zayn fills the tank and pays in cash, and Harry wonders where the money came from. 

“Some people buy, some people sell,” he says when Harry asks, and for a moment he’s unfamiliar again. 

 

☀

 

Harry jerks awake again with the feeling of a scream etched into the backs of his teeth. 

It must be night because Zayn’s face is trapped in shadows. Outside the windows, Harry’s eyes are finding monsters in the dark. 

 

“I can’t do this anymore,” he whispers, words lackluster and strained in the failing light. 

“I know,” comes the response, and Zayn’s eyes don’t stray from the road. And from the simple words, Harry feels that he does know, that there’s a potent understanding that any more of it and Harry’s going to crack, going to snap and break and die and join the ranks of the demons plaguing them. 

 

“Just forget it,” Zayn says, and Harry can’t fathom the thought. “Just forget about everything. 

_It’s over,_ the set line of Zayn’s jaw is saying, insisting, demanding, but Harry can’t believe it. 

Because even when they’re alone with nothing but their pulses and the road, it’s  
festering like a disease inside their veins. 

 

“It’s never going to be over,” Harry says against the growl of wind outside the windows. His teeth feel wet and timid, set loosely in his jaw. 

 

“Go back to sleep,” Zayn says. Harry can tell he’s trying to make it sound firm and final. He hears it instead as a scared and shaking plea, and it’s comfortless.

He still tries to obey. 

 

He closes his eyes, if only to block out the threat of seeing faces along the roadside. Instead, through the black, he sees all the faces caught in his head. 

 

They’re dead, the things scarred into his eyelids. Broken things that linger and cling to life with rotting fingers.

Things that walk in circles, talk in circles, live and die in circles never-ending.

Begging for something to break the pattern, and Harry’s sick of breaking them, and breaking for them. 

 

If sleep comes at all, it’s restless, and ridden with nightmares like vermin, indistinguishable from his waking terrors.

 

☀

 

Morning comes on with a dull ache rattling through Harry’s kidneys. His stomach feels queasy and uptight, bladder twinging, and muscles made of gelatin. 

He eases himself upright in his seat, wondering if he’s anything more than griping sacks of fluid, tied together with sallow skin. 

The thought is far from pleasant, and with a scratched and red-raw throat, he tells Zayn to pull over. 

 

The tremble in Zayn’s legs when they step out of the car tells him that he’s not stopped driving since the last time Harry woke. Zayn’s hair is slick and blackened with sweat and grease, pulled roughly into a low elastic, and strands are falling lifelessly into his face. 

 

Harry relieves himself with a hissing sting off the side of the road as Zayn stretches out his back, popping out the stiffness in his shoulders.

Harry’s eyes wander, crusted and bloodshot. 

 

There’s nothing on either side of the road but flattened ranges of dirt and rock. Even the sky looks stony, all grey and bleached out overhead. 

It still doesn’t feel far enough away to Harry, and a shiver dances down his spine, chasing him back into the car. It smells of clogged pores and bad leather, stifling and terrible and somehow safer than the stale breeze outside. 

He can’t urge Zayn back into the car fast enough. 

 

Even when they’re driving again, putting more distance behind them, Harry can’t claw the paranoia from his skin, the itch behind his teeth and eyelids that he’s being watched and followed. 

 

The itch is nothing new, but it’s blacker and deeper than before, and sending him unwillingly back to the horror that drove them to the road. His head won’t stop replaying it, and the roadside is a blur.

 

☀

 

_A lonely nowhere farmhouse, roots planted deep amid the grass and green, on a trailing wind away from the heart of the city._

_Long-dead plants standing watch outside, and inside, a long-dead spirit that has latched itself into the skin of an old woman._

_It’s made of fury and the sweet rot of decay, and refuses to be reasoned with, ears deaf to their words and pleas and screams, stuffed full with grave-soil._

_The woman is screaming too, but the sound comes far away and muffled, her throat strangled by the entity that’s wearing her bones. There’s not enough skin left on her body to cover and house the organs rioting beneath, and underfoot Zayn’s feet are skidding on grey bile and dead flies._

_There’s nothing human left inside of the thing advancing on them. Harry moves left, a brawny distraction, bait while Zayn circles it, searching for a way in, but there’s nothing, no pulse points, no tactic._

_Breath is tight and coming in sharp shocks that jab through lungs down spines._

_Hands come sliming around Harry’s throat, dead or undead, he’s never been sure. The grip slams him to the floor - all dirt and bits of unclean things - and shakes him. He blacks out as Zayn smashes a window with his fist, drags him through._

_Somehow they make it out, escorted by the sounds of cackling and agony._

 

☀

 

The pictures behind his eyes fade, but the terror doesn’t, and Zayn side-eyes him as he shakes.

“Do you want to talk about it?” There’s a mock in Zayn’s voice, and Harry doesn’t want it. He knows the way Zayn gets mean and digging when he’s scared, and he doesn’t want it aimed at him. 

He answers _no!_ in a frenzied, rampant, watery voice and Zayn’s bite hesitates, and softens. 

“Alright,” Zayn says, and drops it. 

 

They’ve never had much to say to each other. A colourless partnership, the bare bones of friendship, with too much sameness reflected in each other’s shadows to bear much talking. 

 

Harry feels like talking, though, when the hazy colour begins to leave the sky and leave them alone in the dark. He feels like reaching out, saying things aloud if only to confirm they’re both feeling the same kind of sickness. 

But that mocking dig of Zayn’s voice has scared away his breath, and instead he traces the words he’d like to say with his tongue along the insides of his teeth, and waits. 

 

 _This wasn’t what I signed up for,_ he wants to say. But Zayn would just tell him that they hadn’t signed up at all. Too much time spent cowering at each other’s sides, and every conversation, aloud or otherwise, reminds Harry of talking to himself. 

 

☀

 

In the quiet twilight of the road, further and further away from the city, Harry has almost convinced himself to pick up the pieces and change his mind.

 

“Wasn’t what I signed up for,” Harry finally says out loud, but it’s a toothy mumble, and easily missed. 

“That’s why we’re leaving,” Zayn says. His words all have a final sense of grit and groan to them. The sun sinks lower in the sky. 

 

“I just don’t know how it’s going to work,” Harry says, miserable and damp in his skin. 

“What,” Zayn asks, and there’s barely any give. 

“Stopping. Leaving. What are we going to do? It’s not like we can just...” Harry’s fingers wave listlessly through the air. “Turn it off.” 

“You’re not suggesting we keep going,” Zayn deadpans. He doesn’t voice it like he has any faith left in the notion. 

“What else is there?” Harry asks, and there it is, the desperate edge, the manic hysteria, creeping up from his throat and bubbling, spilling over his lips. “We’re stuck seeing these things, all these people - ”

“They’re not people anymore,” Zayn cuts in, voice clearer with anger as his bloody hand grips tight on the wheel. They’re flying down the road now, kicking up dust and stones. 

“Seeing all these ghosts... what do we do if we’re not helping them?” Panic twists in boils across Harry’s tongue, his eyes wild, wondering if the frenzied way he’s talking has been a long time coming, or he’s finally losing his mind. 

“We weren’t helping that thing in the barn. If we keep this up we’re getting ourselves killed, and you know it.” Zayn’s voice has become black and tired, but Harry can’t stand the silence any more. 

“You know that wasn’t normal - ”

“What do we know about _normal?”_ Zayn shouts. “That thing back there was just a taste of what we’re surrounded by! We’ve spent years - _years,_ Harry! - reasoning with spirits and qualming ghosts, convincing dead souls to move on and make peace, and that’s what happens. We get too close to something that doesn’t _want_ to move on.. something that doesn’t _want_ our help, and it’s going to happen again.” He takes a moment to breathe, and Harry takes a moment to wonder if he’s ever heard this much at once from him before. 

“It’s going to happen again, and we’re not going to last much longer if it keeps happening.” 

“We’re going to see these things, whether or not we’re doing anything about it,” Harry says, his voice losing appetite and falling victim to Zayn’s venom. 

Silence falls while they both fret, the same dark thoughts tacked onto the poison afflicting their vision, outcasts and out of their minds. 

 

☀

 

Zayn makes a throaty comment while Harry’s unfocused and staring blankly out the window. A comment, not a question, voicing that he’s going to stop the car at whatever lonely station they find next in their path. 

It’s a warning, giving Harry enough time to sort through his panic before they get there, and he’s sick to his stomach but grateful for it. 

 

☀

 

It’s not enough distance.

Harry knows it’ll never be enough distance to fix the rattles in his head, and it feels too soon to stop.

 

But there’s dust in their teeth and their tires, and there’s more blood shot through Zayn’s eyes than yellowing whites, and they’re running on empty, and finally they stop. 

 

A gas station, looking alien and alone, a connecting garage and motel, a battered unit standing defiant and destroyed against the emptiness around it. 

It’s as bleak as Harry was expecting, sandpapered down, colours chipped and peeling. 

 

Zayn fills the tank and parks the car, while Harry tries to will himself to leave it. 

 

Finally he manages, and stepping into the humidity outside is like having a thousand clammy hands pressing against his skin. Invisible and reaching out, and it’s too familiar a feeling for him to stomach.

 

There’s a large red sign painted across the side of the shop. _Rest Stop,_ it says, all faded out from smoke and dust and time. The only letter with any pride left in its pigment is the _‘p,’_ down the line and furthest from the reach of the sun. 

Harry’s eyes dull staring at it, thinking of _punishment, pestilence, plague…_

 

“Give us a room.” The clerk raises an eyebrow at the brusque command, but lets it be. 

“How many nights?” He pulls a logbook from below the counter. It looks aged and dusty, and Harry wonders when the last time anyone stayed here could have been.

His mind is filled with flashcard thoughts of water stains and cockroaches, barebones mattresses and television static. 

He finds he doesn’t care, as long as there’s space to lie down. The luxury of a shower seems barbaric, ludicrous.

 

“Three,” Zayn answers, turns to Harry. “Gives us some time for our heads to settle.” 

“Sure,” Harry shrugs. His eyes are still running dizzy with the shape and spin of the road. 

“Two beds?” The clerk asks, all boredom and business. 

“Yes,” Zayn says, a little cold in the quick way he snaps the word. 

Harry can’t be bothered to be offended. He wouldn’t have minded the closeness, simplicity of body heat, maybe a comfort from the terrors that wake him. 

But Zayn doesn’t have the same craving for bodies or company, instead retreating off on his own, growing quiet and more shadowed. 

 

Harry isn’t sure he’s ready for the days of solitude, and clings to Zayn’s side as he pays, and the clerk goes to show them to their door.

 

He feels like an overgrown shadow, a tumour, and doesn’t whine when Zayn peels him off his arm and pushes him not-too-gently towards one of the beds.

“I’m going to wash up,” he says, and slithers into the bathroom. 

 

Harry hits the mattress, finding it to be thin but accommodating. He sleeps long past Zayn running the water cold, and wakes to the sun falling out of the sky, a greenish dusk, and pounding in his head. 

 

 

☀ ☀ ☀ 

 

 

Louis can’t sleep, and can’t sit still, his muscles an ache of nerves as he drives. 

Drives away from what was supposed to be the best city this side of things. Supposed to be a place for love, and light and warmth, happiness.

Leaving it because there was nothing left inside but a chilling darkness.

 

Driving away from it, Louis can’t separate anymore if that cold feeling is stronger inside the confines of the city, or inside his stomach, heavy and knotted.

In the passenger seat, Liam is silent and watching the road.

 

When Louis hits a bump too violently, takes a corner too sharply, Liam bites his tongue to keep from speaking, warning him to be more careful. He sinks down in the seat instead, knowing it would do no good.

 

There’s a gun in the glove compartment. Liam watched Louis load it, and felt a sick and helpless kind of terror uncoil in his stomach lining. 

 

 _You don’t have to do this.._ In the hours leading up to the car, the road, it feels as if he’s said nothing else. Just an endless, trembling repetition of _Louis, you don’t have to do this._

But the shaking set of Louis’ jaw says otherwise. 

 

☀

 

The road stops turning and twisting, and falls into one long stretch of stones and desert when Liam’s silence breaks slowly, haltingly with words, and the air gets cooler around them. 

Night is coming for them, and Liam can’t stand the thought of being alone in the dark of the car, wordless and ignored. 

 

He starts terrified and winding tellings of the way they met, all the firsts that felt like they meant something, anecdotes and words that make his stomach ache and tighten. 

 

 _“Do you remember that little gravel path by the river we used to go to? And you’d always tell me off for waking you so early...but it was the best place the sunset came where there wasn’t so much traffic around…”_ He trails off, his chest cavity feeling stuffed with feathers and not enough air. 

 

 _“And when the water pipe burst that winter they shut our heat off, do you remember that? Walking around with our scarves on and seeing our breath.”_ Louis’ silence is driving him on, crazed and hushed and swarmed with snapshots.

 

 _“Do you remember all those postcards the old tenants left behind, blue tacked to the walls?”_

 

 _“Breaking those dishes when we dropped the box, and trying to fit into that shower stall, and the way all the books swelled up in the summer…”_

He can’t tell anymore if these are happy memories or just snapshots of things that had happened. He can’t tell if it matters, either, because all the things making noise in his skull are theirs to remember, Louis’ to hold on to and he’s not holding on to them, and the further they drive the more hopeless Liam feels, waiting for him to take away the chance to relive their memories, and make some other kind. 

 

 _“Do you remember... Do you remember any of it?”_

 

Louis’ crying from the start, and pulls over after an hour of it. His shoulders collapse, and forehead drops to knock against the steering wheel. He cries and apologizes between gasping breaths, tears running muddy with so many _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_ ’s. 

 

But his tears dry to match Liam’s throat, and Liam knows they’ll be back on the road when the moment passes, knows they won’t be turning around. 

 

☀

 

They’re still driving when the sun crawls back up along the horizon. Liam doesn’t understand how they haven’t been passed, or pulled over with the way Louis’ sleepless driving weaves the car across the lines. But there hasn’t been another car to witness them, and Liam doesn’t know what he could do if there was. 

All he can do it sit beside him, pleading, trying to reason, begging for him to stop the car and turn around. It’s useless, but he’s tireless. 

 

He digs up more stories, more fleeting thoughts and crumbs of days, and the atmosphere inside the car becomes electric with his persistence. 

 

It’s not the reaction he’s trying to illicit when Louis screams, hatefully, and hurtfully, frustration and despair, and all the things Liam’s been feeling, snaked and spilling from his throat.

 

Anger flames, slicing open Louis face along the tracks his tears make, and all across the pavement, the rubber rips and burns.

 

Louis’ foot has come crushing down on the brakes, and the car screams out its protests.

 

They stop, and slide out from the car. Louis’ left it in the middle of the road, keys in the ignition, and they sit with their backs to the front tire.

 

The clouds are forked and purple, streaks of poison painting dusk along the horizon. 

 

Liam prays for someone to come along, find them like this, and fix what he can’t seem to fix.

 

Reality feels thin, the weightless air to a road in the middle of nowhere, and their shoulders are almost touching. 

 

Louis’ praying for an act of God, an eighteen wheeler to appear from out of nowhere and slam into the body of their car. 

Nothing comes but a spattering of raindrops, and not enough to drown in.

 

“I never thought I’d live to see you sink so low,” Liam says, and wishes he hadn’t. 

 

“Things have gotten so fucked, Liam,” Louis says, so much later, and it’s a jagged whisper, eaten by the sky.

 

☀

 

They keep driving. Liam runs out of things to say, and for a few kilometers whispers nothing but _I love you, I love you, I love you.._

He stops when the air seems to change, and Louis’ anger dissipates into empty ghosts of sobs. 

 

☀

 

Liam can’t tell how much time has passed. His eyes have unfocused staring through the windshield. He’s wondering how much further they’re going to go before something breaks, when he’s answered. 

The engine coughs, pathetic and diseased, and soon to be done for.

 

All of Louis’ begging, open-palmed strikes against the wheel, and raw-throated screaming can’t convince the machine to take a proper breath.

 

 _It’s dying on you, Lou,_ Liam thinks, and the thought is so close to the surface it nearly breaks through. _The car, and your plan with it. Dying on you._ It would be unforgivable to voice, so he stays quiet, and wonders if he’ll ever be good for anything else.

 

They make a shaky and shuddering crawl to what looks like it could be the last rest stop on earth. 

Louis can feel the car dry-heaving beneath the weight of its cargo.

 

When it stops, they sit in the car a while longer, just letting it run. Finally Louis rouses himself, shuts off the engine. 

 

His fingers flutter towards the glove compartment before he steps outside, but thinks better of it.

 

The air outside is sticky. Another resentment, and another thing that has his skin crawling. 

 

Liam lingers while Louis looks for a mechanic. The rest stop has a dead end feel to it, like cobwebs and endless roads.

 

☀

 

A grease-streaked face rolls itself out from under a junk-pocket of a truck. He looks to be part machine, naked underneath a sagging coverall, with oil and grit built up under his fingernails. 

 

“Help you?” A brisk mouthful of letters, no room for nonsense. 

Louis looks at him, takes in the dirty blonde patches of hair blending into dirty brown, and restless blue eyes that seem to be crawling over and under the skin of Louis’ face. 

“Car’s fucked,” he replies, tongue careful. 

“Tends to happen,” the mechanic says, not conversationally, but almost forlornly. “Poor things no match for what we want them for.” Louis’ eyes narrow at the odd words, but he dismisses it with a stiff toss of his head.

“Can you fix it?”

“Give us the keys,” the mechanic says fussily, standing upright and wiping oily fingertips along the legs of his coveralls. Louis can imagine they used to be blue once, before giving way to a dingy grey. It’s in the same way he can imagine the shape of the battered bottle-blonde’s cock from the outline nestled against his thigh. Both images leave him feeling empty and queasy, but his eyes still follow the sight of the strap slipping off the blonde’s shoulder. It’s a breathing habit he can’t quit, but the motions feel too scripted to be his own. 

 

Louis stands idle and uncomfortable while his car is surveyed. He feels an absurd urge to apologize when the hood is lifted, and the abused and steaming insides are revealed. 

 

“You don’t want her working for very long,” the mechanic says after too long of a silence to keep Louis from jumping.

“What?”

“Just long enough to get you where you’re going..” He hums then, toeing at a sagging tire. “Though I reckon she’s already done just that.” The more he talks, the more effort Louis puts in to pinpointing his jumbled accent. Somewhere Northern, maybe, all blurred and washed away by a hundred other places. 

“What are you saying?” Louis asks, sore and exasperated. “Can you fix the fucking thing or not?”

The mechanic stiffens, straightens, and Louis becomes hyperaware of the large and clumsy shaped wrench held carelessly in his hand.

“Ay, I can fix her,” he says in a voice slower than the cryptic rampage of tongue and syllables before. “But you’ll never drive her again.”

Louis can’t tell if it’s some kind of threat or the babblings of a madman, and a chill sets in over the back of his neck and in the pit of his stomach. Liam is at his side in an instant, looking warily at the mechanic the way a stray dog eyes approaching storm clouds. 

“Just leave him to it,” Liam whispers to him, too loud to be cautious, too quiet to matter. “Just get a room and leave him to it.” 

 

The words fall lifelessly, but soon after Louis finds himself on his back atop a bitten mattress. A small room, one bed, and all of Liam’s silence. 

 

 

☀ ☀ ☀

 

 

Harry rounds the corner, heaving out something dry and terrible from his lungs, and he spits a glob of stale saliva onto the ground.

Movement catches his eyes, and he jerks his head up to see a figure in front of him.

 

Harry stiffens and Liam shrinks. There’s an apology, mouthed and ready, but it falls short, turns to dust, and Liam turns away.

 

Harry can’t block out the unease he finds in Liam’s eyes, the jerky urge to reach out and help, the need to fix bad things. It’s the same need he’s been trying to carve out of himself, and it’s agony to look at. 

 

Harry darts back to the room.

“We’re not alone here,” he says aloud to the darkened room. Zayn groans on the mattress in response. 

“Of course we’re not alone. Someone’s got to be running the show,” he says, tired and flat. “Just leave it.” He says it knowing Harry won’t leave it, but feels pressed to say it anyway. He sits up in the time it takes Harry to chew his lip, and form a response. 

“It’s just weird...here of all places, when we’re the only ones here...”

“Well we’re clearly not the only ones here, as you’ve just woken me up to tell me so,” Zayn gripes, feeling his pockets for a cigarette. “It’s got nothing to do with us,” he adds, standing and making for the door. 

Again, Harry clings to his side, an oversized shadow, stretched out and elongated by the sun. 

 

☀

 

Across the parking lot, Louis is standing beside the wall of the building, tensely watching the figure bent over the hood of the car, pulling out bits and pieces, and smearing oil-greased fingers across the front of his coveralls. 

Louis’ posture looks pained and wild, ready to bolt, and supervising, as if the mechanic is capable of working miracles, and the car ready to drive away in an instant.

 

“Should we talk to him?” Harry asks, voice low despite their distance. 

“What’s the point?” Zayn answers, thumbing the end of an unlit cigarette while his other hand searches stiffly for a lighter.

 

“There was another... But look at him,” Harry says, his eyes crawling their way to the form clinging to the shade of the building, and finally, despondently vanishing back inside. 

“What about him,” Zayn sighs, and Harry can’t pick apart if he doesn’t see it or doesn’t want to. 

“There’s something off...I think he might be - ”

“Like us,” Zayn fills. It’s not a question, but a heavy breath of words. Harry’s skin feels pink and humid.

“I think we should ask. Find out...” He stops, gaging Zayn’s expression. 

 

“What’s the point in us getting out of that place if you’re just going to start chasing new demons, H?” Zayn asks finally, leaden and tired. 

“I just think we should say something,” Harry says, small and brittle, his bones aching in the sun. 

“I don’t fuck with the living,” Zayn says, like it’s something simple he can so easily just cast off. “You want to get involved, fine. He’s all yours.” 

 

It feels like permission, and as Zayn slips back inside to sleep, Harry remains, feeling dirty and secretive, watching movement like a reptile, unmoving in the shade of the overhang. 

 

☀

 

It’s Liam who makes his way towards Harry first, having suspiciously been watching his gaze for some time. He seems to flinch when Harry speaks, unused to words so direct after so much strained silence. 

“Hello,” Harry says, almost under his breath as Liam approaches, standing stiffly as Harry sits, his back against the wall. “What are you doing here?” There’s no combative edge to his voice, but Liam’s still taken aback. 

“I don’t know,” he says simply, but it doesn’t feel simple. “What are you doing here?” It’s a parroted response, and Harry nods, neck looking pained.

“Running away from something,” he says, and it does nothing to reassure the unease in Liam’s guts. 

Movement across the lot has Louis abandoning the mechanic with his car, and shutting the door to his room. Liam and Harry’s eyes both follow the motion, both a little sadly, and flinch at the slam. 

 

“Is he your...?”

“Boyfriend,” Liam says stiffly, then something seems to shift inside him, and he sags. “Ex-boyfriend, I guess.” A silence stretches out, sickening and empty. “I don’t know anymore,” and his words are so low they’re almost invisible. 

 

“Don’t know why I told you any of that,” Liam says with a tight laugh after a silence has gone on too long to be comfortable.

“It’s alright,” Harry says, a mutter half to himself. He doesn’t add to it, and stands stiffly, watching Liam leave.

 

☀

 

Back in their room, Harry doesn’t mention the exchange to Zayn. Instead, he seems to smell it on his skin, something burnt and troubled. 

“Well? Does he have the sight or not?” Zayn asks with a sigh, watching Harry pace on unsteady legs with catlike patience. 

“I don’t know,” Harry answers, his eyes drawn to the closed blinds where snippets of light are coming through the cracked edges. “I only talked to the other one.” Another sigh from Zayn.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that.” Approach strangers, or pace, Harry isn’t sure. 

“I just want to find out.” He doesn’t bother saying more. Zayn knows as well as he does how uncommon they are, and the alienating feeling of seeing death walk by. 

“You want to help,” Zayn says, quietly, and mostly to himself as Harry walks to the window, and glances through the cracks. “What good is it going to do? We’re done with that.” 

“Well what else are we going to do,” Harry says, a grumbling argument, but also strained desperation. “Besides, it might be nice to be able to talk with someone else.” 

_‘Someone else like us,’_ goes unsaid.

 

☀

 

Harry worms his way back outside while Zayn sleeps, dead to the world and unable to convince him not to. 

 

He finds Louis outside his room, trying to draw in some of the stale and cloudless air. His arms are angled down along his body, and he stands uneasily, as if unused to the weight of his bones. 

He looks up to see Harry standing there, and Harry sees suffering in human form, standing with a lack-shouldered slouch, all the pain in the world caught like moth wings, struggling and dying in grey steel eyes. 

Up close he’s almost certain of it. He can see the same shadows of lines aging his face, painting with strokes of greys and purples, tired, troubled, and withdrawn. 

 

“Hello,” he tries, as Louis regards him, guarded and expecting. Harry runs a slick tongue over chapped lips. 

“How long have you been - ” he stops. _‘Driving’_ is the word he knows he wants to say, but his tongue gets stuck on _‘running.’_

Watching the fog in Louis’ eyes, the itch beneath his skin being scratched by his shaking fingers, soon it’s all his mind is able to process.

 

_Running, running, running.._

 

“Few days.” There’s a brittle weight to Louis’ words, like his teeth are chipping with each letter.

 _‘A few days,’_ Harry hears, but the sag in Louis’ spine, the gaunt look of his face says _weeks._ And Harry knows it’s been longer, been much longer eating at him before he set his jaw and began crawling his way to the road.

 

Harry wants to ask if he feels it the same way, the inability to leave his bed, the craving for darkness, the hollow breathlessness after crying.

 

“Where are you headed?” He asks instead, and knows there’s no real answer waiting to be found. 

“Nowhere,” comes the answer, paired with a pointed glance to the car he came in, hood propped open and innards being strewn across the ground. 

 

“I’m Harry,” he offers, with no sympathy to offer for the car. He extends a hand to shake, feeling his fingers gripe and straighten. 

“Louis.” He sinks down against the wall, ignoring Harry’s hand and blinking the sunlight from his eyes. From the new angle, Harry can see eyelashes bruising a shadow against his skin. He thinks he might like to unwind him, and busy his fingers with the knots.

 

“So...are you going to be stuck here long?” It’s a strained string of words, poorly covering the questions he really wants to ask, and he can tell it’s obvious. 

“Don’t know,” Louis answers, exhausted and clippish. 

“We’re driving out of here in a few days,” Harry says. “If you need a ride.” It tastes both weird and formal, but Louis barely reacts.

“Trying to kidnap me?” He says dully. 

Harry looks for something to say, finding washed out shades of greying purple in Louis’ face. The wordless weight of bags under his eyes, stringy hair and all of him set with a glass coating. It’s not a good look. It’s too familiar.

 

“You should eat something.” Harry’s voice feels scraped down.

“Should I,” Louis says back, just as diminished. The quick bite of his words has Harry wondering how sharp he’s used to functioning, how bright and fiery, how it compares now that what’s left is dull and ashen. 

_You’re not used to being like this,_ and Harry’s so tempted to say it out loud. _No wonder it’s not a good look._

“Not good to starve yourself,” he says instead, and Louis’ eyes are hardened when they find his.

“Because you’re the expert on nutritional diets,” he snaps, and there’s another glimpse of the flames. 

Harry just shrugs. There’s no defending the sag in his clothes, or the sharp angles of his arms as he hides them behind his back, trying to find a comfortable way to distribute his weight on blistered heels. Of course, there isn’t one.

 

His eyes fall to the ground, and they find more suffering. A pure white larva squirms its unformed body through the grit. Black ants are all over it, all small legs and pincers. 

 

Overhead, there’s a crow, and it’s laughing, laughing, down at them.

 

He should leave it, walk away and hole up until they start driving again. But he can’t let go without knowing for sure, so abandons any pretenses.

 

“You see...you see them, don’t you?” It’s practically a plea, desperate to be right, seeing that he’s wrong in the confusion linking arms with the hostility in Louis’ eyes.

“See what?” Louis sighs, and Harry can hear all the weariness of the world there in his voice.

“Do you have the sight?” He wishes it doesn’t blurt out without finesse, but the blunt question finally seems to spark something in Louis’ face. 

“‘The sight?’” Louis repeats, looking up at him with surprise almost overpowering his suspicion. “You mean those lunatics who go mad from seeing ghosts around them?” Harry is distraught, but doesn’t disagree. 

“You haven’t, then,” he says, and his skin sits a little heavier on his narrow frame. 

“Of course I haven’t. Why would you ask that?” Louis snaps, a bit defensive, a bit annoyed. 

“You’ve got the look, is all,” Harry says, apologetic but not taken aback. Louis looks ready to spit another mouthful of angry words at him, but he stops, sighs. 

“Guess I deserved that. You always walk up to strangers who look like shit and ask them if they’re mad?” It’s self deprecation as a mask for sadness. To Harry it may as well be a mirror, and it’s something he has to look away from. 

“No, no. Just thought I’d stop and say hello.” It’s hardly a smooth escape, but Harry’s feet pull him back to his room. 

Zayn’s still silent and sleeping, and Harry’s relieved, but also hit with a surge of loneliness that sends him to his own bed. There’s a craving for skin and closeness stirring in his gut, and he tries to fall restlessly into sleep. 

 

Zayn shoos him out of the room an hour later when he won’t stop tossing and turning, and pacing trenches into the threadbare carpeting. 

 

Harry feels like a dog cast outside on a looping lead, free to tangle and bark at his own shadow. 

 

The shadow he finds outside is shaped like someone else. 

 

☀

 

Louis’ demeanor has changed, but his position hasn’t, now drenched in shade by the setting sun. 

Harry is unsure if it’s too soon to try again, to force friendliness, so he approaches cautiously, watching for hostility lurking beside and behind the faded figure, but nothing comes.

 

Louis looks up at him, blank and unpolished.

 

“Are you alright?” Harry asks, and can’t think of the last time he’s said that. Louis looks like he’s deciding whether to answer, still regarding Harry with a peculiar sort of coolness overtop of wary curiosity. 

 

“You never mentioned what you’re doing here,” Louis says, a distracting prompt in the place of an answer, and it’s answer enough. 

“Leaving town with my partner.” He leaves out the garish reason why.

“Yeah?” There’s an insinuation in Louis’ tone. It’s barely a question, as dull and dangerous as a blunt blade, craving a wet stone. Harry can’t decipher what it is that Louis’ craving.

 

Solace, maybe. 

 

“Not that kind of partner,” Harry says, a brush off of the strange dependency he has on the sleeping figure behind a closed door. “Shame,” he adds. “It’d be convenient.”

 

“Convenience is a strange way to choose lovers,” Louis says after a moment of silence. His eyes are tracing the clouds along the horizon. 

“It’s easy. Easy is the only thing that fits with the lifestyle,” Harry says, hoping he won’t be asked to detail said lifestyle. “I just don’t like being alone.” There’s a weight to his words, and to the look he pairs it with, drinking in the heaviness to Louis’ face, the dust lining the edges. “I’m not good at it.” 

  “I’m not good at it either,” Louis says. It’s quiet, a deep breath trying to keep something deeper beneath the surface. Harry stays silent, waiting.

 

“He left me,” Louis says finally, a hollow, metal taste to the words. “I can’t believe he left me.”

 _I can’t believe anyone would leave you. Not voluntarily._ It’s a wild and sporadic thought that Harry doesn’t bother acknowledging. Loneliness, and he’s fixating, but he doesn’t mind. 

“Sorry,” is what he says instead, and it’s as useless as the muscles in his legs, trembling, and making him sit too. Louis doesn’t protest when he slides down the wall beside him, but it hardly feels welcomed. 

 

The sun drops from the sky while Harry soaks in the heartache dripping from Louis’ lungs. It’s too bitter to be fresh, maybe a long time coming, and he doesn’t have words molded to fix things. 

He tries for small talk instead, dancing around the fangs Louis bares to hide the loneliness radiating from inside. 

 

It’s gone completely dark by the time Harry stands, and offers a hand, and the invitation to bed. 

Louis doesn’t say no the way Harry expected, but asks _why?_

 

“Makes it go away for a while,” Harry tells him. 

“Doesn’t last though, does it?” Louis says. Harry can already see him naked, and there’s bitterness crawling from his pores.

“Nothing does.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

There’s a pause. Harry imagines he can hear insects crawling through the dirt.

“As long as it makes you feel something.”

 

Louis nudges him towards his room instead, a dry mouthed mutter about wanting more privacy, and Harry doesn’t object. 

Louis stops in front of the single bed, and turns to face Harry, but doesn’t look him in the eyes. 

“You’re one of them, aren’t you,” he says, fingers trapped in a listless tug at the hem of his shirt. “One of those crazies who tracks down dead people,” he adds before Harry can form a question.

“Yes,” he says simply. He nods through the walls. “Him, too.” 

“Okay,” Louis says, a grey breath in the dim lighting. “What do you want with me?” His eyes move up now, challenging with muted curiosity. “Last I checked I still had a pulse.” Harry stays silent and sad, drawing in the resentment Louis says it with. 

“I just like being close to people for a while,” he says. He steps forward and Louis’ fingers slowly find the clasp of his belt. “It’s the only thing we’ve got that keeps us separate from them.”

“Warm bodies must be a nice change,” Louis says, and his eyes have dropped again.

“The only thing we’ve got that they don’t have.”

There’s a sullen sort of camaraderie then, and a stretch of silence that lasts until Harry pulls his shirt off. 

 

Louis moves slowly, caught on some mundane autopilot, quiet and compliant until Harry moves to lick into his mouth. Louis recoils. It’s not distaste but a hollow pain knifing through his eyes, and Harry doesn’t try again.

 

“Do it like this,” Louis says, drawing back and spreading himself out on all fours.

 _It’s nothing personal,_ the curve of his spine is saying.

 

Harry counts his vertebrae with his fingertips. Louis’ holding his breath, he notes. He wants to press the air from his lungs, so he runs his hands along his sides, squeezes.

 

Louis’ eventual breath is frail and buttery. 

 

☀

 

Zayn’s up when he slinks back in, and Harry can feel the sting of his eyes across his body. He still feels tense and anxious, now with the loosened feeling of pulled muscles settling into a tired ache.

 

“He’s only using you to try to sweat out the fever,” Zayn says, pausing to give the words time to find Harry through the gloom. They do eventually. “But that’s not going to cure him, and you know it.” 

 

“I just want to help,” Harry says, toneless and desperate and Zayn sighs a lungful of grey his way.

“I know you do,” he murmurs, and it’s filled with smoke and sorrow. 

 

“Just let me be selfish,” Harry says, and it’s a hopeless plea that slimes across his tongue. 

 

☀

 

The croaky strain of his body lulls him to sleep for an hour or two, and it’s almost peaceful before the nightmares find him. 

He wakes pale, dragging himself to the bathroom to be sick.

 

He takes a breath, thinks of flesh rotting off ribcages, of maggots and barbecue sauce, and vomits again. 

 

He’s starting to get skinny. He can feel it in the way his clothes sit restlessly on his frame, and in the tired ache that starts to pick up in his legs, and how they creak in protest.

His vision feelings pickled, yellow and sour and the smell snaking from his clothes is vinegar and brine.

 

He convinces himself to stand long enough to shower, and rake the stains from his skin with his bitten nails. 

The smell of sweat and sex slips down his body and the drain like a poorly kept secret, filling the void, and he laughs sickly. 

 

☀

 

Zayn’s eyes follow the motion of the water droplets down the narrow plane of Harry’s chest. It’s in a bored, automatic manner, with no desire or motive behind the gaze.

“Looks fresh,” Zayn comments, and Harry finds his eyes still again, directed at his hip. There’s a bruise flowered out against his skin, lighter and not as angry-looking as the mars and imprints along his back and shoulders from being thrown and dragged and grabbed at. 

“Strange way of trying to help someone,” Zayn says, and there’s no smirk to it, only a dry observation of what Harry’s sure seems like the inevitable. 

Harry stays silent, but his fingers come up to rub over the mark, feeling ghosts of Louis’ fingertips dance there too.

“What about the other one?” Zayn asks, hardly sounding like it matters.

“‘The other one...’” Harry repeats, a little surprised he’d even mention it. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“They’re in love, aren’t they?” Zayn says, and his tone is impossibly cool.

“Hardly matters now,” Harry says, trying to match the frigid tone and failing. It comes out defensive, morose.

“Let’s get some air,” Zayn says, dismissing the topic with a shrug. 

 

Outside Zayn pulls a cigarette from his pocket and places it between his teeth. 

“Defeats the purpose of ‘getting air,’ doesn’t it?” Harry says. Zayn snorts.

“Can’t stand being cooped up inside with you,” he says. “You stink.”

“I showered,” Harry says, a little tartly. 

“Then your clothes stink,” Zayn says unaffectedly. Harry has no defense, even if he had the backbone to argue it, so they both fall silent, watching the mechanic tweaking the robotic organs beneath the hood of a car.

 

“Think that’s how God feels?” Zayn asks, his teeth staining as he breathes out a lungful of fire. “Taking all these broken pieces and trying to make them work again.” 

Harry is silent for a while. 

 

“Haven’t heard you talk abut God in a long time,” he says finally, picking his words carefully, like shards of broken glass from between his teeth.

“Well I’m feeling holy,” Zayn says. They share a humourless laugh, and a terrible thrum in their temples. 

“I’ve seen enough demons to wonder now and then if maybe there are angels out there too,” Zayn says, voice a curling rasp around his cigarette. “But the more I see these days, the more convinced I am that we’re alone.”

“Maybe we’re the angels,” Harry says, flat and far away, and when Zayn laughs it’s the purest sound he’s heard in a long time. 

 

Peace and purity don’t stay with them for long. 

 

☀

 

Harry soaks his shirt in the bathtub, some stale smelling soap mixed in with the greying water, and steps into the dusk outside, feeling the heavy weight of the air slide over his bare torso. 

 

He’s not alone, he finds, feeling a prickle trail up his spine, and Liam materializes from a shadowed corner. It’s a face to put to the paranoia, the noise in Harry’s head nagging that he’s been watched and followed for days, and he bristles. 

 

“Still here, then,” he says, exposed past his bared skin. Liam doesn’t answer, just looks a little stiff, more than a little pained. 

“What are you hanging around for?” Harry asks, trying to shape it into something without aggression. Liam stays silent, but edges closer. Harry can’t see any threat in his movements, but feels tight and cornered nonetheless. 

“There’s got to be a reason you’re still here,” he tries again. It comes out sounding gentler, and just as Liam seems on the cusp of speaking, the door to Harry’s back opens, and they both jump.

 

Zayn stands in the frame, eyes flicking black and deadly to Harry, then softer, greying, to Liam. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, his voice a quiet croak, almost delicate, but Harry can almost taste the unease radiating from his skin. “And Harry,” his eyes shift back to capture Harry’s. “We said we weren’t going to do this again.” 

The wind shifts, panting, humid gusts, but there’s a chill in the air around them, a cold sweat picking up in the smalls of backs and backs of knees. 

 

“I know I shouldn’t be here,” Liam says, and with the words a breathless shiver passes through. “But I can’t leave, not yet.” The chill knifes through Harry’s stomach, and his body inches back towards Zayn. 

“If you’re here for some kind of payback - ” Zayn’s voice has gone colder to match the skin of ice lidding over Harry’s veins. 

“I don’t want revenge,” Liam says, a shaking laugh trickling out and taking root in the stones underfoot. “I thought I had to say goodbye...something. Tell him everything. But I’ve told him everything. He’s always known.”

“You have to make your peace with the life you had. This world isn’t yours anymore.” Harry can’t understand the calm in Zayn’s voice, when his own has been strangled into silence.

He _isn’t yours anymore._ It sits frozen by calamity on his tongue. 

 

He watches Liam, a man dead and still dying, something burning and eating him from the inside, something lying and broken in a single bed. 

 

“I can’t, I have to stay. I have to help him,” Liam says, insisting and toeing closer to them. Harry’s stuck, fighting the pull in his core to do something, and the terror in his bones begging him to run. 

 

“You can’t interfere with the living,” Zayn states. It’s the first spurt of a mundane speech Harry is sick of hearing recited. 

“Well I’m interfering with you!” Liam says. His voice is hinting towards a shout, and while it wakes the tremors in Harry’s knees, he can see how poor the fit is on him. For a breath, the skin above his skull is lit up and stretched, eye sockets dark and sinking.

Sharp flashes of the death beneath his fervor.

It makes Harry’s stomach clench and twist, as if held in a cold-fleshed fist. His skin is beaded and crawling, knowing the promise of spite and teeth cradled in Liam’s expression. A desperate panic begins screaming through his gut, a deep instinct to run away from the cadaver before them, staring into them.

 

“You can’t help him. You can only watch,” Zayn says, his voice doctored to be slow and rich with intent that can almost pass as kindness. But Harry knows the breed, and knows it to be closer to sorrow. 

“I have to do something,” Liam counters. A desperate plea for a life that’s ended, clinging to something hurt and breathing. 

“All you can do is follow him. And the weight of that is making him suffer. He’s going to drown if you don’t let go of him.” Zayn’s eyes are level, looking into the shadowless air Liam is shrouded in. 

“We know what happens when something latches to the living instead of finding rest,” Harry says, grisly and grave, the feel of fingers around his throat too fresh, and he shivers in the heat. 

“It’s going to torture you,” Zayn says. There’s no comfort in his tone. 

“He’s going to hurt himself,” Liam’s voice is a darkened beg. “I don’t know how to leave him.” A pang hits the centre of Harry’s chest with the words.

“It’s as simple as walking away,” Zayn says, and now some soothing quality is oozing through the cracks of his teeth. 

“Or staying behind when he does,” Harry adds. He doesn’t bother to say that it will be painless; there’s no fear present, only a deep suffering - a responsibility. 

 

Harry’s words lack the impact Zayn’s hold, and it’s something they both resent quietly. How Harry’s drive - to help and make peace, make right things that have been wrong for so long - isn’t enough to overpower Zayn’s talent at what they do. The greying way how Zayn hates it, all of it, and always has, but stayed to go through the motions by Harry’s side. 

Harry knows he wishes they could trade, or merge, Zayn’s gift with Harry’s need to save. 

 

Combined, though, they reach. Another troubled wave comes then, another helpless realization that they’ll never really escape it. 

 

“This isn’t our fight,” Zayn says, and Harry knows the same thoughts have been running on lame legs through his head. 

Liam’s silent as Zayn retreats inside, leaving Harry standing by the door, undecided. 

 

“You have to help me.” _I don’t,_ Harry thinks, and he feels wild and desperate.

“Please just go to him,” Liam says, and there’s a break in his voice, a hairline fracture where speech descends into a ghastly whisper. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m useless.” 

Harry feels the words imprint themselves behind his eyes, digging in and blinding him too.

“Please,” and Harry’s skin is itching to obey, to close himself inside a room and turn the lock, draw the blinds. 

 

In his silence, Liam twists and churns.

 

“Please, he needs someone. I can’t stand it. I can’t watch him sleep.” The wind is moaning over the dust and dirt. “It gives him nightmares when I do.” 

Harry lets out the breath his lungs have been desperately clinging too. It comes out sounding like a frayed apology. Liam looks frayed too, and they regard each other with a sad sameness.

“I’m just so sick of trying to take care of him.” It’s anguished and deadpan, and Harry can see the skeleton behind the words.

 

☀

 

The door is unlocked, and Harry knew it would be. The weight of Louis’ thin frame hadn’t carried precaution in it, and the knob turns easily in his hand. 

It’s dark inside, but the air tastes burnt and sleepless, and a shape stirs on the mattress as he steps inside. 

Louis seems tired past the point of feeling shocked, and barely sits up, doesn’t question why he’s here. 

He still seems apprehensive when Harry crosses into the room, and hesitates. Louis doesn’t gesture, but blinks down to the covers, and Harry takes it as the only invitation offered, and sits. 

“Thought you might want some company,” he says, feeling a quiet heat hum off of Louis’ skin, reaching out and warming the chill coating his. 

“Sure you’re not projecting?” Louis asks, a dulled down murmur attempting to be sharp. 

“Not really,” Harry says, a breath as he slides his body closer through the dark. Propped up on something almost soft, all he wants is to curl himself against the body beside him, close his eyes and slip away into dreamless sleep. He’s not sure it’ll come, though, with his mind and muscles so tightly wound and turning over.

Louis seems to be just as restless, and just as tired when he lets himself sink back against the mattress, eyes not quite closed, and Harry can see his expression in the sliver of light. He doesn’t know what to make of it, all grey and grieving, empty but almost open.

“You can..” Louis stops himself, swallowing dryly. “You can, if you want to,” he finishes haltingly. 

_If he wants to,_ and Harry lowers his body down beside him. 

 

Harry doesn’t try to kiss him this time. 

Louis stays on his back and turns his head to the side, and Harry accepts it as a peace offering, a compromise. 

He presses his mouth to the damp heat of Louis’ neck, and noses at his hair. 

Louis bites his lip, holding back choked whimpers and shallow breaths. 

 

When it’s over, sleep comes creeping in. 

 

☀

 

Harry wakes, body laying in a line against the edge of the bed, the same position he fell asleep in. Louis is not curled on the other side of the mattress anymore, and his back is pressed snug against Harry’s chest. 

It’s not the warmth that woke him, but the uneven hitching of Louis’ lungs, the near soundless way he’s crying, with their skin burning patterns together in the dark. 

Harry shifts, drawing an arm up to drape around Louis’ body. Without light, it feels concave and fragile, paper-thin and spilling sorrow on the sheets. 

“I’m sorry,” Louis says, his voice ragged and reedy. He sounds small, and feels small when Harry reaches out to splay his fingers across his ribcage.

“It’s okay,” he says, hoping there’s more strength to saying it out loud, because it sounds hollow and feeble inside his head. 

 

Harry holds him as he cries, holds him knowing he would pull away if he tried to kiss him, and holds him knowing he moved to press their bodies together while Harry slept. 

 

“You never told me where you’re driving to,” Harry says when the pale shudders seem to slow. 

“Nowhere in particular,” Louis answers, and his voice is painted blue and disgraced. 

“Until you ran out of road?” Harry asks. He can feel his heart beating into Louis’ skin, and he hopes he feels it too.

“Gas, more like,” Louis says, more of an exhale than real words. “I wasn’t planning on stopping here.” There’s a pause as Harry’s fingers caress gently, coaxingly. “It just didn’t feel far enough away from everything.” 

“I know the feeling,” Harry murmurs against his shoulder, and Louis’ spine seems to soften. 

 

They stay together like that, and sag to someplace close to sleep again by the time dawn tiptoes in, and paints the tiny room with underwater shades.

 

“Thanks for staying,” Louis says, and they stand and stretch apart. Harry wonders why it feels strained suddenly, and a flicker of motion in the doorframe gives him the answer.

Liam stands, blue lit in the strange lighting, and they way he watches them is blue too. Harry looks back to Louis, soft and shelled in the early light.

“I’m no good at losing people either.” Harry speaks softly into the space between their skulls. 

“How do you know I’ve lost someone.” Louis has corralled his expression. It’s carefully blank. Harry instantly misses the slight expressions he’s been learning to find in Louis’ face. It’s barely two days since meeting him, but Harry thinks it feels faster, getting to know someone when they’re both lonely.

Harry’s eyes move a fraction of an inch towards the doorway. It’s all he needs to do. 

He watches as confusion is scraped away by something scared and understanding.

Louis spins wildly, trapped and terrified, seeing nothing and choking on the emptiness. 

 

“Is - ” the thought can’t leave his lips before he’s turning back to look at Harry, some helpless emotion swelling up, blue and horrible behind his eyes. 

He looks back to the doorframe, vacant to him, and shies away from it, though his arm outstretches, balking. Any disbelief mixed in with horror vanishes as he watches, and sees hairs raise and goosebumps form as he reaches.

 

“How long,” Louis asks, his voice a blackened waver. Harry looks to the door, and the sad, weary look Liam’s holding. 

“I don’t think he ever really left you,” Harry says. It’s a spineless admission, and he can feel the heat burning through Louis’ eyes, hurt and harrowed. 

“You knew! You bastard, you knew and you still - ” His voice cuts off - a hailing shriek, cracked and fleeting and then gone.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t,” Harry says, but it’s halfhearted and bleak.

 

“What does he want,” Louis asks after a slivered breath. His eyes keep flashing between Harry and the empty frame, searching, then falling back again. “I thought they only stayed if they had something...something unfinished, something like that...” Tears are welling up in his eyes again, fresh and fierce and hard to witness. 

“He says he’s trying to take care of you,” Harry says after a moment, to give Louis some time to breath.

“He said that now?” Harry can’t meet his eyes. 

“Before.” 

“You’ve talked to him? Has he been here the whole time?” Louis asks, anger and grief and everything terrible running lacerations through his voice, breaking it and tearing it to pieces. 

“He’s been close,” Harry says. “You’ve felt it when he’s close.” 

Liam moves closer as he talks, coming to stand at Louis’ side, and bringing a hand to run along the length of his side. Louis’ eyes stretch, wide and wet as his skin prickles, tight and cold.

“It’s felt like that since - ” he doesn’t say it out loud, and Harry swallows the pain in the air. 

“Tell him I know how much he loved me,” Liam says in the squirming silence. 

“He knows how much you loved him,” Harry breathes, feeling tears of his own balling a fat fist in his throat. 

“And I don’t want him to feel like this anymore.” Liam’s voice comes out like static, thick and flickering, and when Harry repeats the words Louis breaks, pulling his arms around his body and dropping to his knees on the floor. 

“Just get out,” he cries, already almost hoarse. “Both of you, just get out. _Get out!”_ It rises to a scream and Harry backs towards the door, passing through a patch of frigid air.

 

Outside the sky is clear and vacant. 

Back in their room, Zayn is still sleeping, but wakes when Harry slams the door. He’s met with a stare that softens to hardened sympathy. 

“I told you not to get involved,” he says as Harry moves in shakily. 

“I have to fix it,” he breathes, kneeling at the side of Zayn’s bed. “I can’t walk away from this, I can’t.”

“Harry...” Zayn’s still holding on to the edges of sleep, and the strain of his tongue falls heavily. 

“Please, help me. We can put a stop to this,” Harry pleads. Zayn sits up, digging his fingers into his eyes.

“How many times is going to be the last time?” He asks, and Harry can see grey shadows cast beneath his cheekbones. He looks as tired as Harry feels, but he’s also feeling a core-deep nag to do something, to stop the pain and the lover haunting the body in the next room. 

 

☀

 

They meet outside. The tense line of Zayn’s body casts a rail-thin shadow beside Harry. His resentment and discomfort shines through the grease and grime coating their skin and their stances. 

 

Liam’s gone quiet. Contemplative, though Harry can see how hard conscious thoughts are becoming, everything boiling down to surround Louis, and not leaving Louis, everything else becoming transparent and unimportant. 

Liam’s become almost transparent too, and the dulled sun is shining through the gaps of his spine. 

 

“Take him with you.”

“And do what. Go where.” Harry’s tongue tries to be pleading but his throat stretches and flattens his words. 

“Does it matter?” Zayn says, a dusty murmur to his side. Nothing ever matters to him, and Harry’s always been envious of his front of apathy. 

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Liam’s agreeing, just as helplessly. “Just don’t let him be alone.” A stale wind rattles through them as they stand. 

“I’ll try,” Harry says, and means it, forces the way he means it out across his tongue, and it comes out sounding scratchy and almost scared. 

“Promise me you will. Swear to me,” Liam says, a lethal firmness soaking through the air, and Zayn shivers while Harry nods rampantly. 

“I swear,” he says, a gasp in the chilled air as the sun reaches down to them. 

Something seems to settle in Liam’s expression, some of the washed out palette smoothing down and fading to something nearly calm.

“He doesn’t like cigarettes. Don’t smoke in the car with him,” Liam says as the light filters through his skin. 

 

He’s gone a heartbeat later.

 

☀

 

“He’s gone, isn’t he,” Louis says quietly when Harry goes to find him in his room. “I can feel it...like this hollow sort of...” his voice fades and he looks to Harry with tired ashy eyes. 

“Like the hole after a tooth falls out,” Harry finishes. “Feels like it’s supposed to hurt.” Louis closes his eyes, and when he opens them again there’s a lost look held captive inside.

“Doesn’t though. Not really. Not like it’s been hurting,” he says, and Harry holds out a hand to draw him off the edge of the bed. 

“Will you come with us?” Harry asks quietly. It’s something he doesn’t want to ask, hasn’t been able to calculate what his answer will be, looking at the grooves and waning of Louis’ skin.

“Is that what he wanted?” Louis asks. It’s not an answer, but the way he lets his hand rest in Harry’s is. 

“He didn’t want you to be alone,” Harry replies, and takes a step backwards. He’s followed, tentatively, their hands still barely touching. They make it to the door.

 

☀

 

“It feels different,” Louis says, voice raw and tired. The sun is creeping up on them, almost white in the sky, and Louis has his head tipped back, eyes closed. A weight’s been lifted from his shoulders, but they still sag. “He’s really gone, isn’t he?” 

“At peace,” Zayn says, and Louis turns to look at him, moving a half-step closer to Harry as he does. 

They’re standing by the car, and Harry’s not sure how much longer they’ll stand there, how much convincing it could take to get Louis sat inside. 

“Is that why it never felt real, like it was really over?” Louis asks. His head tilts down again, and he blinks, as if testing out the feeling of sunshine over his skin. 

“Sometimes emotions get caught between when someone dies and stays behind,” Harry says, and doesn’t miss the flinch in Louis eyes. It’s still fresh, and Harry’s close enough to feel the sting. 

“It’ll heal,” Harry adds, and Louis breathes beside him. 

 

“We should get going,” Zayn says, and the keys are catching sunlight in his fingers. 

Harry opens the passenger side door, and beckons for Louis to step inside. Louis hesitates, draws back. 

“Let me just...” he edges away, and Harry watches him go as Zayn takes his seat behind the wheel. 

 

Harry watches as Louis collects ragged weeds and white flowers from the edge of the road, the stems scratching at his hands.

He returns with a handful, and a lost look in his eyes. 

“Wanted some kind of proper goodbye,” he says, rainclouds darkening his eyes but not spilling yet. 

 

Harry looks away as Louis digs a ring from his pocket, a simple dark band, and places it in the dirt. He toes a pile of dust and stones to cover it, and lays the flowers overtop. 

 

Harry meets his eyes when he stands upright again, and finds all the pain in the world caught like moth wings, fluttering, ready to take flight. 

 

“Do you need anything from your car?” Harry asks before they get inside. A humid breeze is skating lazily across their skin, damp and suffocating. Louis turns, takes a half-step towards the abandoned vehicle, then stops, shakes his head.

“No. Let’s go.” 

 

☀

 

The sun swells in the sky above them, and as the tires crunch and gripe over the gravel, Harry reaches forward to trace a finger down the thin line of Louis’ forearm. 

 

The road stretches out, grey and daunting, without the glint of a destination, but suddenly alive with the promise that it won’t be like the place they’re leaving behind. 

 

☀ ☀ ☀ ☀ ☀

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/neurtsy


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